None of this is complicated.
He went to meetings, worked out, and had the playbook but he didn't practice with the team.
Going into year two he had a lot more experience than a typical rookie did but less than a normal second year player does.
His didn't perform terrifically well as a WR but it's still early enough in his career that there's hope. The fact that he kept the WR #3 job and they didn't draft a replacement suggests that BB/Obrien/Brady think he's doing ok out there but they don't definitively answer it.
The part that seems to be more complicated is how to evaluate Tate's 2010 season. For the stat crowd, I'll pose my earlier questions again:
- How many receptions/yards/TDs would have been enough to call Tate a success in 2010?
- To achieve that difference, would you have Brady throw more or divert targets from another receiver? Who?
From a team success perspective, a 14-2 record and a prolific offense (historically so in terms of efficiency) makes it tough to criticize. So it has to be Tate's contribution to that offense. So lets look at that:
Tate had 46 targets but only 24 catches, for a 52% catch rate. People like to mention Wallace who had a 61% rate (same as Jennings). If we keep the same targets but apply a 61% catch rate, Tate's receptions go from 24 to ...wait for it... 28. Is that the difference people are looking for?
But wait you say. Tate was so bad that Belichick and Brady stopped looking for him. The premise being that if Tate was a better receiver, he would have gotten more targets and the stats would have been comparable to players like Wallace and Jennings.
But over the 2nd half of last season, the Pats were 8-0 (5-0 against playoff teams) scoring 31+ points in each game. Over that span, Brady completed 68% of his passes with 22 TDs and no picks. His low QB rating over that span? 107
Are people really suggesting that Belichick and Brady would rather have been chucking the ball to Tate than doing the things that led to those results? Maybe Tate got 46 targets because that is all the offense needed to be successful. With Welker poised for a better year, Woodhead more comfortable in the offense, Gronk and Hernandez emerging as weapons, Edelperson and Price pushing for opportunities, Vereen being an excellent receiver and a likely shift towards a more balanced attack...I'm not sure Tate's targets are going to significantly increase in 2011 regardless of how much he develops. Only a major injury or flushing Branch and his 92 targets will change the math enough to turn Tate into Wallace/Jennings.
So maybe we have to find another way to be look at Tate's contributions to the team. I suspect that if the team continues to be wildly efficient on offense with Tate on the field, he is doing his job. He will need to improve his individual game (driving the DBs on his routes, fighting harder for underthrown deep passes, eliminating the couple of bad drops he had, etc.) to stay on the field. As Belichick has shown many times, if you ain't improvin', you're movin'.
